


The Captain Dilemma

by fracnkie



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, I think that's very important and you'll see why, Panic Attacks, answering the question of who threw dr carmilla from the airlock, but a very vague description, did you know on pirate ships that the captain position was usually voted on like an election?, everyone has a little feature in this, it's more a character study actually, rated teen for canon-typical death murder and violence, the inherent issues with being forced to be immortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24273778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fracnkie/pseuds/fracnkie
Summary: If someone was to ask the simple question of "who in is charge" to the crew members of the starship Aurora it's very interesting how many different answers one could get.
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 22
Kudos: 227





	The Captain Dilemma

**Author's Note:**

> While this is betaed, I also wrote this very late at night because I forgot to sleep. So if it seems slightly rambling and varied in its amount of actual description that's why. Otherwise, enjoy!

If someone were to ask who is the captain of the starship Aurora, you could get one of two answers depending on who you’re asking and when. If you’re asking Jonny, he’d say that he was. If you’re asking seven of eight of the other crew members, they’d say no one. If you decide to ask the Toy Soldier, it entirely depends on whether it had called Jonny the captain or the first mate last and who heard it do so.

If someone was to ask who was in charge on the starship Aurora, you could get an array of answers. Nastya is in charge of the ship itself, Ashes is in charge of the crew, and Jonny is technically the highest-ranking member on the crew since they lack a captain. 

When you ask that question the answer likely won’t be too serious. At least, most of the time.

Raphaella la Cognizi was in charge of all the science done on the ship that wasn’t rocket science because that was Nastya’s job after all. Ask her who is in charge and she’ll say Nastya for that very reason.

Then she’ll leave and go back to her lab to have a little sit and think while doing her experiments. She’ll think about how when she knocked on the airlock the first time she saw someone pass it they startled but let her in. She discarded the rebreather as they closed the gate to the void behind her. The frazzled crew member, the man of brass that Raphaella found so interesting, looked like they had seen a ghost and went to go find who Raphaella presumed was the captain of the starship instead of letting her entirely into the ship itself.

The door out of the airlock remained locked and closed until two new people found her, led there by the man of brass that was Drumbot Brian. The two let Raph in as Brian left and sat down and talked, hands on their guns. They asked about her mechanism, they asked about Carmilla, and they asked how she found them. They were guarded and tense but eventually, eventually, they calmed down. They invited Raph to stay because they were in charge and they called the shots and while neither of them said that, the intention was clear.

Baron Marius von Raum is neither a baron nor a doctor but he is the ship’s medic and in that sense he is in charge of the well-being of the crew and seeing that they get all of the shrapnel out of their wounds. So he’s a nag sometimes to make sure the others are eating and drinking and sleeping if they are able and just generally making sure the people on this ship are okay. If you ask him who was in charge he’d jokingly say that he basically is and change the topic to psychology or something.

Then when he gets to cleaning the med bay for the twentieth time just to kill time he’ll think of his first day on the ship. He’ll think about how he lost that bar fight on some planet he doesn’t remember as someone stabbed him with a bottle right in the stomach and while he knew that he couldn’t die and resented that, he couldn’t exactly stop himself from passing out in a not-dead state for a while.

He woke up in the med bay of the Aurora with two people talking over him as Marius struggled to wake. Someone was fiddling with his arm, moving the circuitry and resoldering. At the feeling of his arm being messed with like on-fire nerves and how much it reminded him of how he woke up the first time he failed to die, he started to panic and scream and hyperventilate.

He’d remember a voice that he’d never hear say a soothing word ever again apologizing and apologizing for things beyond their control. He’d remember the person fixing his arm would stop and reassure him, tell him that they could stop if he wanted to and that they’re sorry, they’re very sorry for everything like they understood why this was happening and why he was panicking and he believed them and he still does. 

Gunpowder Tim is the master-at-arms of the Aurora so he would say he is definitely in charge because the only way anyone gets anything done around here is through sheer firepower. If he simply stops giving them bullets they won’t get very far with just some dinky knives. Tim’s idea of “in charge” really revolves around who would win a mutiny and he’s very insistent that he will.

As he practices his guitar down in the gun deck he’ll hum a song that plagued him like gas and think of the first major event that happened when he got on the Aurora. Someone had pushed the doctor out of the airlock. He couldn’t see any of them at that point, not having his eyes fully implemented but hellishly, hellishly still alive. He remembered that the second person he asked was very insistent that they were in charge now and the fourth said they were rather glad she was in the vacuum. He also remembers both of those voices yelling with a third, infuriating voice that still is implanted forever into the back of his brain before hearing an awful lot of commotion.

He remembers that the fourth person said that they didn’t think they killed Doctor Carmilla shortly before it was revealed that Doctor Carmilla was, in fact, not dead, and it wouldn’t be a stretch for the fourth to know that. He remembers that the second didn’t have an alibi and was so quick to want to leave. He remembers how quick the fourth was to agree and how it really seemed like the red joker and the ace of hearts were calling the shots.

The Toy Soldier isn’t in charge of anything on the Aurora. It’s been in charge of a few things before but you’d have to be more specific, old chap. The Toy Soldier has been in charge and people have been in charge of the Toy Soldier. 

Oh, you mean who is in charge of the Aurora? Well, Jonny D’Ville is the highest-ranking officer so of course, he is! And with that question answered, it will want to play a game and that game is likely Mahjong because everyone on the Aurora likes to play Mahjong!

And it will remember that the master-of-arms isn’t usually the one to teach it how to use its new gun. And it will remember how nice the person who bought the Toy Soldier from Mr. and Mrs. Bittersnipes’ shop is. And it will remember how the lead singer had been a lot less mad when that person explained how nice the Toy Soldier’s voice is and how nice it is to have someone who chooses to be immortal along with the rest of them and how nice it is to have something that wasn’t created by the good doctor.

It will remember its first show very fondly and where it sang a rather sad song about a bloody revolution where the very nice person who bought the Toy Soldier seemed to be the highest-ranking, even if they were technically disgraced. It is a very good story and it would tell you some time but that highest-ranking person said that they didn’t want to sing that song anymore.

And it would remember that when the door is left open for the Toy Soldier to come back inside it’s always unlocked by the same two people who greet it with a smile despite one of them also being the one to lock it out.

Drumbot Brian is the pilot and some people thought that meant he is the captain as well and depending on what mode he is in he would confirm or deny that fact or not-so-fact. In the case that he’s in nicer mode, he will confirm that Jonny is technically the highest rank in the ship but that Jonny isn’t the captain. He would not mention who is in charge, though. 

That’s mostly because, whatever mode he’s in, he really thinks that what’s most important for someone in charge to know is what they’re not in charge of. When he first got to know the crew in private it was made clear to him that the crew wasn’t in control of his actions or his morals and that he had complete control over himself. That only extended as far as the first mate and not to the captain because, as the person who he considered to be in charge from that point on said, the captain is a bastard who should get pushed out of the airlock. Brian didn’t think that was as funny as they did so they didn’t mention it again. 

He still gets his directions as the pilot from only two people. Those two people tend not to argue in front of Brian even when they disagreed over where to go next. Whoever got to him first gave the order and they could usually convince the other that the order was justified, and Brian also thought that being level-headed and willing to compromise was important for whoever was in charge. So he doesn’t exactly say who’s in charge because that’s not really important, now is it?

Ivy Alexandria, as the ship’s archivist, can tell you exactly the ranks of everyone on the crew and tell you exactly who is in charge based on rank. She can tell you whose order is most likely to be followed when given. She can tell you who the Aurora herself is more likely to listen to. She can give you this information down to the decimal and then you stop listening halfway through because that’s not really what you were asking.

Ivy doesn’t really remember things very well and she thinks in facts, not opinions or morals. So while you want to figure out for a fact who’s in charge, Ivy doesn’t actually have any sort of answer for that. She knows the captain got pushed out of the airlock and she knows who did it, really everyone did at this point except maybe the Toy Soldier who wasn’t paying attention. 

If you defined the one who’s in charge as the one who was most able to command the room and be in control of the situation, then she just might have an answer for you. She remembers very clearly, which was odd because she doesn't usually do that, that there were two people who are able to control her fast-beating heart and shallow breaths every time she has a panic attack. She knows that if she isn’t in control of a situation and desperately needs that structure she can go to those two for a direction or a structure or a task to keep her distracted and they were always very nice and very calm about it, no matter what might’ve been happening before she came into begging for something to do.

She should go organize her books again. She should help Marius cook. She could help fix this panel with them because she’s very good at looking for any details they may or may not miss. She should come drinking with them as they tell stories that she doesn’t remember because they’re made up like almost everything that comes out of their mouth. Every time she will have control over her mind, of her situation, by the end of the day.

Ashes O'Reilly is the ship’s quartermaster and what that meant is that they could be considered in charge a lot of the time. They break up fights and get them to venues and make sure no one kills anyone during the show. They will say they’re in charge, definitely. You’ll take their word for it because they’re very confident in that. 

They know for a fact that they aren’t, though, for a variety of reasons. The main one is that they’d never been in charge of anything in their life and they certainly aren’t going to start now. They weren’t the one who said to burn to Malone or the library or the one who said they wanted to breathe for just a little bit longer, to live a little bit more. In fact, they are very sure that no one on this ship was in charge of that last, final plea even when they think they were. Ashes takes comfort in that fact because then they know it’s not their fault they’re cursed to live for eons. In fact, the ones they would admit to being in charge, even before the captain was pushed from the airlock, were the ones that made sure they knew that it wasn’t their fault. Ashes hated taking orders from the doctor but they knew they had to and while that technically meant the doctor was in charge, they didn’t like to think about it like that.

They remember saying to Tim how they thought one of the people who drilled that fact into their head with comforting, assuring words was definitely the one who's been wanting to take over the ship. In a way, they considered it like a blessing, a thank you, a final, non-direct encouragement that maybe the ones in charge shouldn’t force you to do jack shit.

Jonny D’Ville would say that he’s in charge, drunk or sober.

Nastya Rasputina would say that she and the Aurora are in charge 

And Jonny D’Ville would think about how quick he is to compromise with Nastya more than anyone. He would think of when she said that she was going to rescue Briar Rose; he was pretty much all for it despite his usual banter about it being dumb. He would think about how much he made sure to Nastya that she was in charge of herself and nothing he or the doctor said was going to change that.

And Nastya Rasputina would think of how when Jonny had asked her to help him get the doctor out the airlock she didn’t even hesitate, despite some deep, traitorous part of her hurting at the idea. She would think about how he did, in fact, give good and well-meaning orders when he wanted to. She would think about how, in fact, he is technically the captain now that the captain has been forcibly removed from the ship because, since the beginning of pirates, the title of captain has been voted on as a democracy.

And if the crew of the Aurora is asked who was in charge and are absolutely, positively forced to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, everyone but Nastya Rasputina and Jonny D’Ville would say that both Nastya and Jonny were in charge as a team; the longest standing Mechanisms, older than the ship herself. And if you asked Nastya she would say Jonny. And if you asked Jonny, well, he’d say that no one could be in charge of anyone, really.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me @fracnkie or @byron-von-raum on tumblr


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